On May 7, MAVLink-Military kicked off in person in Washington, D.C., with Dronecode leading the morning’s vendor-neutral programming and Auterion sponsoring. We came away from the event with a clear signal to the community, a plan in place, and a new working group officially off the ground.
The kickoff panel brought together Dr. Lorenz Meier, Founder and CEO of Auterion and creator of PX4, Pixhawk, MAVLink, and QGroundControl, Soren Monroe-Anderson, Co-Founder and CEO of Neros Technologies, and Ramón Roche, General Manager of the Dronecode Foundation, to introduce MAVLink-M: a new extension to the MAVLink protocol focused on defense and dual-use applications to a full room of industry representatives and government officials.
What MAVLink-M Is
MAVLink-M builds on the same open standard that has powered drones across the industry for over a decade, and adds a focused message set for use cases that have been outgrowing the core dialect. Targeting and engagement, payload safety and arming, and remote payload control are all on the early scope list. The work is dual-use by design, with applications across defense, public safety, and other regulated domains. The effort will bring together industry to create a vendor-neutral standard and seek government participation in its development.
How the Panel Played Out
Monroe-Anderson walked the room through Project APEX, the Neros effort to define a clean electrical and mechanical interface for drone payloads. This effort, not directly related to Mavlink-M, showcased the need for open standards in government and defense projects is not isolated. The team at Neros is starting from a 10-pin connector with power, USB, video, and standard serial, and they are actively soliciting feedback from other vendors before locking the spec.
Lorenz framed the protocol side of the work and the case for keeping it inside the MAVLink ecosystem rather than spinning up a competing standard. Auterion has been extending MAVLink internally for years and wants that work to land in a shared, neutral place.
Ramón closed the loop on governance. Dronecode will host the working group the same way it hosts every other open technology workstream: open license, neutral repo, real maintainers, and a requirement that proposals come with working implementations. It is the model that has kept MAVLink coherent for ten years, and it is the model MAVLink-M will follow.
What’s Next
The working group is targeting a first draft of the dialect in four weeks, followed by a multi-vendor fly-off where payloads from different companies run against a single open implementation. Pre-validation work and legal guidance for participants are already in motion.
Get Involved
The MAVLink-Military Working Group is open to industry and government participants alike. The fastest way to plug in is to join the mailing list, where the Foundation will share schedule details, agenda topics, and ongoing technical discussions.
For industry participants, the working group is open. Join the mailing list to follow along, or email General Manager Ramón Roche at rroche@contractor.linuxfoundation.org to get involved directly. Dronecode Foundation membership is encouraged for organizations looking to play a sustained role across MAVLink-M and the broader Dronecode ecosystem, but it is not a prerequisite for joining the working group.
For government stakeholders interested in Demo Day, working group observation, or coordinating program engagement, please contact Ramón Roche directly at rroche@contractor.linuxfoundation.org.
- Join the MAVLink-M Working Group mailing list: lists.dronecode.org/g/mavlink-m
- MAVLink-M Working Group announcement and details: dronecode.org/mavlink-m-work-group-announcement
- Initial draft of the specification: github.com/auterion/mavlink-military
- Dronecode Foundation membership: dronecode.org/membership
Stay connected with the broader Dronecode community:
- Dronecode Foundation: dronecode.org
- Dronecode Discord: chat.dronecode.org
- PX4 Discussions: discuss.px4.io
Thanks must go out to all the participants, including our member organizations and interested parties from industry and government. We especially want to highlight our Platinum Member Auterion for making MAVLink-M and the event possible. We look forward to an exciting future for MAVLink-M with your participation!
